Safety is one of the most important considerations that should be taken into account before buying a vehicle. As every vehicle goes through the government crash testings, crash test rating for a vehicle is so far the best thing you should look up to in order to determine the overall safety of the vehicle. All vehicles will have these ratings and this is a good place to begin. The federal body responsible for the crash tests, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA employs two methods of crash testing for determining the safety of the vehicle. They are full frontal impact and side impact. They use a five star scale, means the higher the number of stars the safer the vehicle is, or the lower the number of stars the more dangerous the vehicle is.

Besides, NHTSA’a safety ratings, you can also look up to the vehicle safety ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. They also conduct crash tests in order to determine the safety of vehicles and their ratings fall under the categories- Good, Acceptable, Marginal, or Poor.

Apart from checking the safety ratings, you can also check the type of air bag system a vehicle has. While checking this, you should keep the fact in mind that law has mandated all new vehicles to have dual front airbags. There are many car manufacturers that equipped their cars with side and rear airbags, along with dual front airbags. Side and rear airbags are an important addition to multi passenger vehicles, such as vans and sport utility vehicles (SUVs). You may consider a vehicle which has side curtain airbags that drop down from the headliner, offering head protection from the side. Weight sensors that disable the airbag if an occupant below a certain weight is sitting there are also an essential addition to the list of safety features.

Also consider the rollover rate of a vehicle. Generally, vehicles with a higher rollover profile are more likely to turn over. SUVs are about three times more likely to roll over than passenger vehicles. Reportedly, the majority of SUV accidents occur due to rollover. Antilock brakes are a very essential safety device. Insurance companies thus give car owners a discount if their vehicles have these brakes. Never choose a vehicle sans antilock brakes. These are only a few of the safety features to look for!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Buying a Car. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.